THE GREAT GADFLY:

Safe?

I work around people who are significantly younger than me, and some of them, I swear, look like they could be my parents. They dress old. They cut their hair old. They talk old. And I don't mean "retro" old, and I don't mean crotchety or grumpy or quaint or anything like that. I mean, they look...like...old.

I do think it's a fact that some people aren't comfortable with being certain ages. Some people are just born to be old people. Some people should never be anything but teenagers. I think we all socially retard at some age, or else we remain dormant until our ideal age happens and we snap to life. I wish we could sell our youth and old age on the eBay, and that way geezers-in-training can do away with that pesky youth crap, and all those eternal teenagers won't have to look so embarrassing when they're trying to rock an eyebrow ring at age 46.

I just want everyone to be happy, is all.

What "ideal" age am I? I'm pretty cool with 32. But when I was 16, I'd have told you I was cool with that. I like my grey hair, and I also like that I don't have any wrinkles. I like not feeling pressured to do drinkey, up-all-nightey, clubby young people stuff anymore, but I like still being able to get away with it when the mood strikes. I never lamented not being able to buy alcohol when I was a teenager. I look forward to senior citizen discounts, and I also look forward to making people do shit for me because I'm old. But I'm in no hurry to take half an hour to climb stairs, I'm not really chomping at the bit to experience incontinence, and I like my teeth.

I think people...a LOT of people...a lot of people around my AGE...start crossing rivers in their lives, because they feel a need to move away from things. They leave certain of their sensibilities and experiences behind in order to embrace something more secure and practical. We get tired of risk and constant change - we want stability and safety. I see it happening in people I know all the time. People who were at one time complete insane geniuses are now playing golf and focusing on an office job and a mortgage.

Not that there's ANYTHING wrong with that...

...it's just, I dunno, sad. I think anyone who is amazingly creative and puts their talent up on a shelf for the rest of their lives is cheating him/herself and everyone else who would potentially have a chance to enjoy what that person does so amazingly well.

I swear, this morning on the way to work I saw someone I went to college with. I had a bit of a hero-crush on him back in the day. He was a complete freak. A brilliant painter. He used to walk around campus with his shaved head and his burlap bag and his nasty dirty t-shirts like a punk rawk version of Grasshopper from "Kung Fu". He was kind of a mythical creature to me, an artfag god of the midwest. We hung out once or twice - he took me to his studio and showed me his books about dwarves and fetishists and sideshow freaks and whatnot. I think maybe we went to Waffle House once, too. Anyway. He was this Godlike Creature to me, a person I saw myself wanting to be but had no idea where to start.

If indeed this was the same person I saw this morning, he looked like such a.....Dad. Now, don't get me wrong - he looked really good, very handsome, very well put-together. And lord knows what I must look like these days, particularly in my 9-to-5 work drag. And I guess it was that thought which scared me the most. If this was indeed the same guy I knew from college, and his appearance now is so completely different and profoundly unsettling to me, what kind of beast must I have become?! And other than the reality check of it all, do I really care what I've left on the other side of the river? Should he?

And who knows - he could still completely rock, in whatever way "rocking" applies to his life these days. Or it might not have been him at all. Who knows really. I'm projecting and I love it.

I got a kind of "promotion" at my job last week. I don't know if it will pay any more money, but I'll be working more directly with writing and editing, albeit in a marketing environment.

I'm kind of afraid of my desk job right now, for all the reasons mentioned above. I think office jobs make you old and inflexible. That's my crackpot theory du jour. Office jobs make you a "happy" bird in a cage, content to whistle and peck at seeds all day, all the while slowly forgetting the connection between happiness and the sky. All of these people around me every day, their comments and likes and dislikes seem so interchangeable, yet at the core they seem like such a potentially diverse crowd. I'm not interested in assimilating. I'm afraid of whatever virus it is that makes people WANT to assimilate. I'm not interested in being "happy" in quotation marks.

I saw a help wanted sign at a video store yesterday, for a full time counter person. It's an art-faggy video store, and it's in my neighborhood. I thought about working with art films all day, chatting with people, bitching about cranky porn-addled regulars, gossiping with co-workers about the customers. It sounds like a blast. Of course, I know it would pay for shit and I'm sure the benefits would be horrible. But I also know in some other, really profound ways, I'd be happier than I've been in a long time.

I more or less shelved the idea.

Then, this morning, my supervisor took me aside and informed me that she had resigned from her position, and that she took a job in a bookstore and will be focusing on writing two books. She looked really, really happy when she told me this. Maybe happier than I'd ever seen her. She's nearly ten years older than me.

Holy crap.

I don't want to get old before my time.